Laudator Temporis Acti

Vergil, Aeneid 7.56 (avis atavisque potens) might make a good family motto, unless one considers that the hero to whom it refers, Turnus, came to a bad end. Translators seem reluctant to render it literally, e.g. Theodore C. Williams (of a line of mighty sires), H. Rushton Fairclough (of long and lofty ancestry), J.W. Mackail (of long and lordly ancestry), Robert Fagles (strong in his noble birth and breeding), Nicholas Horsfall (strong in his line of forbears [sic, read forebears]).

Allen Mandelbaum comes closer (he had mighty grandfathers and great-grandfathers), although he transfers the adjective away from Turnus to his ancestors. Although atavus (whence English atavism, atavistic) can mean any remote ancestor (Oxford Latin Dictionary, sense 2, citing Vergil's phrase), strictly speaking it means great-great-great-grandfather (id., sense 1), and so I would translate the phrase, in my pedantic fashion, as mighty in his grandfathers and great-great-great-grandfathers.

See the list of ancestral kinship terms in Plautus, Persa 57 (tr. Paul Nixon):

My father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, great- great-great-grandfather, and his father, too...

pater, avos, proavos, abavos, atavos, tritavos...

On this line from Plautus see Alessandro Buccheri, "The metaphorical structuring of kinship in Latin," in William Michael Short, ed., Embodiment in Latin Semantics (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2016), pp. 141-175 (at 155-160).

With Vergil's combination avis atavisque compare Varro, Menippean Satires, fragment 63 Astbury = 69 Cèbe (avi et atavi nostri...).

Pindar, Olympian Odes 8.77-80 (tr. Anthony Verity):

Even the dead have a share
in duly enacted rites,
and the dust does not hide from them
their kinsmen's prized success.

ἔστι δὲ καί τι θανόντεσσιν μέρος
κὰν νόμον ἐρδομένων·
κατακρύπτει δ᾽ οὐ κόνις
συγγόνων κεδνὰν χάριν.

The same, tr. Richmond Lattimore:

Even they that are dead have some share
of things done in the true way;
nor does the dust obscure
the grace of their kinsmen's virtue.

Basil L. Gildersleeve ad loc.:

78. κάν = κατά. ἐρδομένων: The MSS. have ἐρδομένον, which is harsh. The expression κατὰ νόμον ἔρδειν is sacrificial. So Ηes. Theog. 416: καὶ γὰρ νῦν, ὅτε πού τις ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων | ἔρδων ἱερὰ καλὰ κατὰ νόμον ἱλάσκηται. τὰ νόμιμα, iusta, often of funeral rites.—79. οὐ κόνις: On the free position of the neg., see O. 1, 81.—80. συγγόνων κεδνὰν χάριν: The dust does not hide (from the dead) the noble grace of (their living) kinsmen. As the dead are not insensible of rites paid in their honor, so they are not blind to the glory gained by their kindred.

Simonides (?), fragment 4a (tr. David Sider):

The Athenians, first among the Greek fighters at Marathon,
laid low the might of the Medes in their golden apparel.

Ἑλλήνων προμαχοῦντες Ἀθηναῖοι Μαραθῶνι
   χρυσοφόρων Μήδων ἐστόρεσαν δύναμιν.

ἐστόρεσαν: see Liddell-Scott-Jones (9th ed., p. 1650), s.v. στόρνυμι, sense 2b: level, lay low. The word is cognate with Latin sterno, English strew.

See D.L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 226-231.

Sophocles, fragment 683 (tr. A.C. Pearson):

That city can never attain to safety, in which justice and virtue are trampled under heel; while a babbler directs the state, with the goad of mischief in his hands.

οὐ γάρ ποτ' ἂν γένοιτ' ἂν ἀσφαλὴς πόλις
ἐν ᾗ τὰ μὲν δίκαια καὶ τὰ σώφρονα
λάγδην πατεῖται, κωτίλος δ᾿ ἀνὴρ λαβὼν
πανοῦργα χερσὶ κέντρα κηδεύει πόλιν.

A friend just emerged from four months of lockdown. He sent me these photographs from his first post-lockdown trip, to Almonaster la Real:

Homer, Iliad 9.613-615 (tr. Richmond Lattimore):

                                                        It does not become you
to love this man, for fear you turn hateful to me, who love you.
It should be your pride with me to hurt whoever shall hurt me.

                                                   οὐδέ τί σε χρὴ
τὸν φιλέειν, ἵνα μή μοι ἀπέχθηαι φιλέοντι.
καλόν τοι σὺν ἐμοὶ τὸν κήδειν ὅς κ᾽ ἐμὲ κήδῃ.

Bryan Hainsworth on line 615:

The verse has a proverbial and 'Hesiodic' ring (cf. Erga 353-4 τὸν φιλέοντα φιλεῖν, καὶ τῷ προσιόντι προσεῖναι | καὶ δόμεν ὅς κεν δῷ, καὶ μὴ δόμεν ὅς κεν μὴ δῷ), but cannot be proverbial as it stands, for καλός is unusual in the epic as a moral term, cf. Adkins, Merit and Responsibility 43-4.

Hesiod, Works and Days 353-354 (tr. Glenn W. Most):

Be friendly to your friend, and go visit those who visit you.
And give to him who gives and do not give to him who does not give.

Goethe, Faust, Part II, lines 11336-11337 (tr. David Luke):

Something lovely to behold
Has vanished like an old tale told.

Was sich sonst dem Blick empfohlen,
Mit Jahrhunderten ist hin.

Literally:

That which once recommended itself to the gaze
With the centuries is gone.

Calvin Thomas glosses mit Jahrhunderten as Jahrhunderte lang, in which case mit Jahrhunderten ist hin = has been gone for centuries.

John William Mackail (1859-1945), "What is the Good of Greek?" Studies in Humanism (1938; rpt. Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1969), pp. 44-59 (at 45-46):

Times change; fashions vary; beliefs alter. In Scotland fifty years ago, when I was a schoolboy there, the question we are considering was seldom if ever asked. The value of Greek was taken for granted. Partly, this was a matter of old tradition in a proud and conservative race. Partly, it was due to the rooted belief in education, the national respect for learning for its own sake. Partly, it was the result of a more intangible prestige, towards which these and other elements combined. Education was prized, no doubt, for its results in market value. But it was prized higher, and more widely, for itself. It was recognized as enabling human beings, not perhaps to be successful in the ordinary sense, but to realize their moral powers and intellectual capacities; thus giving its possessors self-respect and entitling them to respect from others, furnishing them with a surer hold on life, with sources of lasting strength and inward happiness.

In education as thus viewed, as given and received in this spirit, the classics, and Greek in particular, held a prominent and an unchallenged place. With most pupils, the classical teaching received did not go beyond the elements; and it was, of course, only a small minority of the population who received even that. But to be entered on Latin was a source of great satisfaction; it was a distinction and a privilege. To be entered on Greek was a higher and rarer distinction still. Greek was regarded not as a useless luxury or an idle accomplishment, but as a prize for the aptest and most forward, who were a little envied, and a good deal looked up to, by their less fortunate schoolfellows. Nor was it a privilege in the lower sense of the term, the appanage of superior birth or wealth or social standing. That age was in a way more democratic than the present, because it was so by a common instinct rather than by contentious theory or abstract dogma. There were classes, and they were clearly defined; but they were organic. The artificial growth of class-consciousness was yet to come. Class-consciousness, and the sectionalism which it implies, are the antithesis of democracy, and they only hamper the life of a nation.

Such was the educational practice—it was rather practice or habit than theory—which produced a corresponding type of citizen: hard workers, clear reasoners, with developed capacities for acting and producing and thinking; with intelligence and character; people to whom life was a serious thing, and learning was perhaps the most precious thing in life.

Id. (at 47):

Now the use of Greek is this, that it lies at the base of humanism. It was through the Greek genius that man became fully human; and without Greek the humanistic mastery of life remains incomplete. And there is this further point to be added—it is of scarcely inferior importance—that the Greek achievement, more particularly in literature, both prose and poetry, is unequalled in quality. In the great Greek writers there is an excellence never reached before or since. They supply us, and this is as true now as it ever was, not only with an unfailing source of the highest human pleasure, but with a permanent model and standard for our own utmost effort.

Greek is not a quack specific. It can be badly taught and badly learned. It can be so handled (as all the best things can) that it becomes useless or worse than useless. But, even after all allowance is made for this, it is a gate opening into an enlarged and ennobled life. Education without Greek may be, and often is, very good; but with Greek it is better.

Id. (at 51):

Another point may be made here. The Greek masterpieces teach us the lesson, never more needed than now, of humility. They make us feel that we have to go to school to the Greeks. Goethe said of himself in the art of which he was so great a master, "Beside the Greek poets I am absolutely nothing." In a confused Babel of tongues, in the torrent of cleverness which spouts and foams round us in endless volume from journalists, novelists, poets, propagandists, it is through Greek that we can keep our feet on solid ground; can realize the virtue of direct truth to nature, of economy in language, of simplicity. Crystalline simplicity—what tells and what lasts—is the final quality of Greek work whether in prose or in poetry. In translations, even the best, it evaporates or becomes turbid.

Id. (at 59):

There is an old story, familiar no doubt to many here, of the question which I took for the title of this address being asked of a Dean of Christ Church a century ago or more, and of his reply that knowledge of Greek not only enabled those who possessed it to feel conscious superiority over others, but also led to positions of great dignity and emolument. The latter of these motives cannot be offered now; but there remains as a reward the dignity of human nature, and the spiritual emolument which cannot depreciate, cannot be lost or confiscated. For the former, the claim which holds good is that Greek makes us consciously superior not to others, but to ourselves. The good of Greek, in the last resort, is that it gives, in a way that nothing else quite does, the highest kind of joy; and such joys are not so common that we can afford to cast them away.

Vergil, Aeneid 10.501-502 (tr. Frederick Ahl):

Witness the human mind, knowing nothing of fate or the future,
Nothing about moderation when puffed with success and good fortune!

nescia mens hominum fati sortisque futurae
et servare modum rebus sublata secundis!

The same, tr. J.W. Mackail:

Ah spirit of man, ignorant of fate and the allotted future, or to keep bounds when elate with prosperity!

Albert Forbiger ad loc.:

Cum v. 501. cf. Hor. Od. III, 29, 29. Ovid. Trist. V, 14, 29. Silium VI, 659. Stat. Theb. II, 93. Iuven. VI, 556. ad Herenn. IV, 24. Tac. Hist. II, 7. alios et Ruhnk. adnot. ad Hom. h. in Cer. 256., cum v. 502. autem Hor. Od. II, 3, 1 sqq. Liv. XXX, 42. Claud. XXII, 160. et plures alios. Conington comparat Hom. Il. XVII, 201. — Verba fati sortisque futurae repetuntur in Anth. Lat. I, 172, 153. I. 178. 111. et III, 81, 43. Cf. etiam Lactant. de Phoen. (in Wernsd. P. Lat. min. III, 321.) 161. at fortunatae sortis fatique volucrem (a Wold. Ribbeckio laud.). 502. — sublata, quod vulgo elata. Cf. Ter. Hec. III, 5, 56. Caes. B.G. I, 15. all. Quod ad sententiam attinet, Ladew. comparat' Liv. XXX, 42, 15. Raro simul hominibus bonam fortunam bonamque mentem dari. Cf. etiam Silius VIII, 546. hunc locum sic imitatus: heu rebus servare serenis Inconsulta modum et pravo peritura tumore!

Epicurus, fragment 471 in Hermann Usener, Epicurea (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1887), p. 301 = fragment 189 in Graziano Arrighetti, ed., Epicuro, Opere (Turin: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1960), p. 510, from Porphyry, To Marcella 27 (tr. Kathleen O'Brien Wicker, rev. Elias Tempelis, with Arrighetti's Greek text):

It is not rare to find a man poor in the attainment of Nature but rich in empty false opinions. For no ignorant man is satisfied with what he has; instead he pines for what he does not have. So then, just as those who have a fever are always thirsty because of the serious nature of their disease and eagerly desire what is most detrimental, so also those who have the soul which manages it in distress are always in need of everything and fall prey to fickle desires under the influence of their excessive greed.

οὐ σπάνιόν γε εὑρεῖν ἄνθρωπον πρὸς τὸ τῆς φύσεως τέλος <πένητα> καὶ πλούσιον πρὸς τὰς κενὰς δόξας· οὐδεὶς γὰρ τῶν ἀφρόνων οἷς ἔχει ἀρκεῖται, μᾶλλον δὲ οἷς οὐκ ἔχει ὀδυνᾶται. ὥσπερ οὖν οἱ πυρέσσοντες διὰ κακοήθειαν τῆς <νόσου> ἀεὶ διψῶσι καὶ τῶν ἐναντιωτάτων ἐπιθυμοῦσιν, οὕτω καὶ οἱ τὴν ψυχὴν κακῶς ἔχοντες διακειμένην πένονται πάντων ἀεὶ καὶ εἰς πολυτρόπους ἐπιθυμίας ὑπὸ λαιμαργίας ἐμπίπτουσιν.

See Elias Tempelis, "A chapter of Epicurean philosophy in Porphyry's Letter to Marcella."

I find "those who have the soul which manages it in distress" to be awkward and misleading as a translation of οἱ τὴν ψυχὴν κακῶς ἔχοντες διακειμένην. I construe the adverb κακῶς as modifying the participle διακειμένην, i.e. "those who have the soul badly disposed." Peter Saint-Andre translates "those whose souls are in a bad condition."

Usener supplies some parallels, including (p. 302) Horace, Epistles 1.12.3-6 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

Away with complaints; for he is not poor, who has enough of things to use. If stomach, lungs, and feet are all in health, the wealth of kings can give you nothing more.

                                                tolle querellas:
pauper enim non est, cui rerum suppetit usus.
si ventri bene, si lateri est pedibusque tuis, nil
divitiae poterunt regales addere maius.

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953), "The Higher Criticism," Selected Essays (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1948), pp. 102-107 (at 102-103):

The Very Learned when they desire to fix the date or the authenticity or both of a piece of literature, adopt among other postulates, these:

(1) That tradition doesn't count.

(2) That common sense, one's general knowledge of the time, and all that multiplex integration which the sane mind effects from a million tiny data to a general judgement, is too tiny to be worthy of their august consideration.

(3) That the title 'Very Learned' (which gives them their authority) is tarnished by any form of general knowledge, and can only be acquired by confining oneself to a narrow field in which any fool could become an absolute master in about two years.

These are their negative postulates in dealing with a document.

As to their positive methods, of one hundred insufficient tricks I choose in particular these:

(1) The establishment of the date of the document against tradition and general air, by allusion discovered within it.

(2) The conception that all unusual events recorded in it are mythical, and therefore necessarily anterior to the document.

(3) The supposition that religious emotion, or indeed emotion of any kind, vitiates record.

(4) The use of a single piece of co-relative documentary evidence to destroy that general judgement.

(5) The fixed dogma that most writers of the past have spent most of their time in forging.

Dio Cassius 56.18.2 (on the Germans, 9 A.D.; tr. Earnest Cary):

They had not, however, forgotten their ancestral habits, their native manners, their old life of independence, or the power derived from arms.

οὐ μέντοι καὶ τῶν πατρίων ἠθῶν τῶν τε συμφύτων τρόπων καὶ τῆς αὐτονόμου διαίτης τῆς τε ἐκ τῶν ὅπλων ἐξουσίας ἐκλελησμένοι ἦσαν.

Pindar, Pythian Odes 3.59-62 (tr. Richmond Lattimore):

With our mortal minds we should seek from the gods that which becomes us,
knowing the way of the destiny ever at our feet.
Dear soul of mine, never urge a life beyond
mortality, but work the means at hand to the end.

χρὴ τὰ ἐοικότα πὰρ δαιμόνων μα-
στευέμεν θναταῖς φρασίν,
γνόντα τὸ πὰρ ποδός, οἵας εἰμὲν αἴσας.        60
μή, φίλα ψυχά, βίον ἀθάνατον
σπεῦδε, τὰν δ᾽ ἔμπρακτον ἄντλει μαχανάν.

Bruno Gentili ad loc.:

Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Pindaros (Berlin: Weidmann, 1922), p. 282 (footnote omitted):

Das gibt die Bedeutung des delphischen γνῶθι σαυτόν treffend wieder und wird durch die Aufforderung gekrönt, die Pindar an sein eigenes Ich richtet, aber auch auf Hieron und auf uns berechnet hat: nach unsterblichem Leben, nach dem Götterlose, sollen wir nicht streben, aber die Arbeit, die uns obliegt und der wir gewachsen sind, sollen wir tun. Denn diese Ethik drückt den Menschen damit nicht nieder, daß sie ihn in seine Sphäre weist, sondern verlangt von ihm nur τὰ ἑαυτοῦ πράττειν.

Horace, Epistles 1.4.12-16 (tr. Colin Macleod):

Amid hopes and cares, attacks of fear and anger,
think of each dawn as lighting your last day:
an hour not counted on will be a gift.
Visit your plump, sleek, well-groomed friend, whenever
you want a laugh, in his Epicurean sty.

inter spem curamque, timores inter et iras
omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum.
grata superveniet, quae non sperabitur hora.
me pinguem et nitidum bene curata cute vises,        15
cum ridere voles, Epicuri de grege porcum.

Eduard Fraenkel, Horace (1957; rpt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 325:

[Lines 12-14], although they do not contain an original or unfamiliar thought, are so full of vigour and deep feeling and worded with such perfect harmony that they sink into our memory for good.

Bruce Catton (1899-1978), The Coming Fury (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1961 = The Centennial History of the Civil War, Vol. I), p. 12:

During the last few years events themselves had been irrational; politics in America could no longer be wholly sane. Here and there, like flickers of angry light before a thunderstorm, there had been bursts of violence, and although political debate continued, the nearness of violence—the reality of it, the mounting threat that it would monstrously grow and drown out all voices—made the debaters shout more loudly and appeal more directly to emotions that made reasonable debate impossible. Men put special meaning on words and phrases, so that what sounded good to one sounded evil to another, and certain slogans took on their own significance and became portentous, streaming in the heated air like banners against the sunset; and even the voices that called for moderation became immoderate.

Homer, Iliad 5.406-409 (tr. Richmond Lattimore):

          Poor fool, the heart of Tydeus' son knows nothing
of how that man who fights the immortals lives for no long time,
his children do not gather to his knees to welcome their father
when he returns home after the fighting and the bitter warfare.

νήπιος, οὐδὲ τὸ οἶδε κατὰ φρένα Τυδέος υἱὸς
ὅττι μάλ᾽ οὐ δηναιὸς ὃς ἀθανάτοισι μάχηται,
οὐδέ τί μιν παῖδες ποτὶ γούνασι παππάζουσιν
ἐλθόντ᾽ ἐκ πολέμοιο καὶ αἰνῆς δηϊοτῆτος.

G.S. Kirk ad loc.:

Horace, Epistles 1.6.15-16 (tr. Colin Macleod):

The wise will be called mad, the just unjust,
if they go too far in seeking even goodness.

insani sapiens nomen ferat, aequus iniqui,
ultra quam satis est virtutem si petat ipsam.

Augustus S. Wilkins on ultra quam satis est:

There is no reason to suppose (with Macleane) that Horace is speaking either ironically or `with an unusual fit of enthusiasm'. The need of moderation in pursuit even of virtue is a commonplace with philosophers: cp. Cic. pro Mur. 30, 63 nostri illi a Platone et Aristotele, moderati homines et temperati aiunt...omnes virtutes mediocritate quadam esse temperatas. Cic. Tusc. IV. 25, 55 studia vel optimarum rerum sedata tamen et tranquilla esse debent. ib. IV. 29, 62 etiam si virtutis vehementior appetitus sit, eadem est omnibus ad deterrendum adhibenda oratio.

Cf. also ultra quam in Tacitus, Agricola 4 (tr. Herbert W. Benario):

I remember that he used to say that, early in his life, he would have devoted himself too enthusiastically to the study of philosophy, to an extent greater than was fitting for a Roman who was also a member of the senatorial class, had not the wisdom of his mother restrained his eager and excited spirit. Certainly his lofty and talented nature yearned for the beautiful ideal of great and noble glory with greater passion than caution. Soon the discernment of age calmed him down, yet he retained from his contact with philosophy a sense of proportion that is very difficult to acquire.

memoria teneo solitum ipsum narrare se prima in iuventa studium philosophiae acrius, ultra quam concessum Romano ac senatori, hausisse, ni prudentia matris incensum ac flagrantem animum coercuisset. scilicet sublime et erectum ingenium pulchritudinem ac speciem magnae excelsaeque gloriae vehementius quam caute adpetebat. mox mitigavit ratio et aetas, retinuitque, quod est difficillimum, ex sapientia modum.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), "A School Song," lines 37-42:

This we learned from famous men,
    Knowing not its uses,
When they showed, in daily work,
Man must finish off his work—        40
Right or wrong, his daily work—
    And without excuses.

Raymond B. Waddington, Aretino's Satyr: Sexuality, Satire, and Self-Projection in Sixteenth-Century Literature and Art (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), pp. 12-13, with notes on pp. 167-168, and figures at the end of the book on unnumbered pages:

More significant for our purposes is the line of stylized, iconic illustration of Priapus. A concomitant of the vogue for serious investigation of antiquities by humanist scholars and artists,⁴² it reproduces the surviving priapic statuary in graphic form or illustrates the accounts of priapic worship in the Fasti and in the Carmina Priapea. Before 1480, a popular item of household decor was a pseudo-classical, bronze oil lamp with a cover, possibly designed by the medallist Cristoforo di Geremia, illustrating the sacrifice [of an ass] to Priapus.⁴³ The basic strategem of such images is the presentation of the figure as a herm. The head will be bearded, satyr-like, often very similar to the conventional representations of Bacchus, frequently garlanded; the torso may be included; the genitals, almost invariably ithyphallic, should be present; the attributes of the god — pruning hook, fruit, flowers, libations — usually will be evident. Primaticcio's painting for the Pavilion de Pomona at Fontainebleau, which survives through an engraving by Master L. D., restores the god to the garden (fig. 2). Here we see groups of men and women, dressed all' antica, energetically working in the garden, watched by a couple in the left foreground, the whole presided over by the ithyphallic, bearded herm in the middle background. The presence of a child between the kneeling women suggests the harmony of humans with the productive cycles of nature.

Doubtless the most influential image of priapic worship was the famous woodcut in the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice, 1499).⁴⁴ In it Priapus is anthropomorphized to an unusual degree (fig. 3). Not only is the torso represented, his arms are included; with the right he holds his pruning hook and in his left hand a bowl of wine. The grotesquely large genitals are attached to the herm at the anatomically correct level, appearing rather as if a living Priapus were standing behind a podium with the ithyphallus protruding through an opening. Overhead is a leafy bower; before the altar the garlanded ass of Silenus is sacrificed; the numerous celebrants of both sexes play musical instruments, brandish torches, and throw fruit, flowers, and wine bottles toward the herm.

The essential point of the herm image, in all its variations, is synecdoche: the part, not the whole. The god is reduced to the phallus, symbolizing fertility, abundance, sexual potency, or simply male power. As a symbol, no matter how earnestly the desired result is implored by the worshippers, Priapus remains unthreatening to humans. His role is the passive one, theirs the active. However lifelike the artist's anatomical skill, the herm never has legs. The priapic literature and art thus have the consequence of returning the myth to its earliest form: once again the god is the phallus and the phallus is the god. A concomitant effect of priapism is to displace the classical sense of proportion in the representation of the male body. Greek aesthetics valued discreetly small genitalia and a disproportionately large penis suggested monstrosity;⁴⁵ the Renaissance, however, accepted phallic gigantism as a summum bonum.

42 See Roberto Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 1969); Francis Haskell, History and Its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (New Haven, 1993); and Leonard Barkan, Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture (New Haven, 1999).

43 See Anthony Radcliffe, 'Two Early Romano-Mantuan Plaquettes,' in Italian Plaquettes, ed. Alison Luchs, Studies in the History of Art 22 (Washington, D. C., 1989), 93-103.

44 The seminal role of the Hypnerotomachia woodcut is discussed by Fritz Saxl, 'Pagan Sacrifice in the Italian Renaissance,' Journal of the Warburg Institute 2 (1938-9): 359-63. The book's influence on artists in Aretino's ambit is noted by E. H. Gombrich, Symbolic Images: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance (London, 1972), 108. There is now a reliable English translation; see Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream, trans. Joscelyn Godwin (London, 1999).

45 On this, see Francois Lissarrague, 'The Sexual Life of Satyrs,' in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek World, ed. David M. Halperin et al. (Princeton, 1990), 55-6.

2. 'The Garden of Priapus,' engraving after Primaticcio, by Master L. D. Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna.

3. 'The Worship of Priapus,' woodcut from Francesco Colonna, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (Venice: Aldus Manutius, 1499). Reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

Horace, Epistles 1.2.62 (tr. H. Rushton Fairclough):

Anger is short-lived madness.

ira furor brevis est.

Seneca, On Anger 1.1.2 (tr. John W. Basore):

Certain wise men, therefore, have claimed that anger is temporary madness.

quidam itaque e sapientibus viris iram dixerunt brevem insaniam.